Jihadists are being blamed for beheading of two Christian schoolgirls, reports Dan McDougall

Sunday November 20, 2005
The Observer

First light is the most captivating time of day as you cross the vastness of the Indonesian archipelago.

Set against the blood-orange horizon, the echoing call of the muezzin shakes you from your dreamlike state as men file to morning prayers in bleary-eyed procession. Islanders arch their backs against heavy carts laden with fresh jackfruit and laughing children in white uniforms dawdle to school.

But in the central towns of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi events of the past few weeks have destroyed the frivolity of the pupils' daily journeys.

Three weeks ago, four cousins from the tightly-knit Christian community, Theresia Morangke, 15, Alfita Poliwo, 17, Yarni Sambue, 17, and Noviana Malewa, 15, were brutally attacked as they walked to the Central Sulawesi Christian Church High School by men wearing black ski masks. Three of the girls were beheaded. Noviana, the youngest, survived, despite appalling machete wounds to her neck.

The headless bodies of her cousins were dumped beside a busy nearby road. Two of the heads were found several kilometres away in the suburb of Lege. The third, Theresia's, was left outside a recently built Christian church in the village of Kasiguncu.

A week after the attack, a day after Alfita's funeral, two other Christian girls, Ivon Maganti and Siti Nuraini, both 17, were shot by masked men as they walked to a Girl Scouts' meeting. They and Noviana are still critically ill in hospital. All six were Christians in a predominantly Muslim community.

And yesterday police in Sulawesi said two young women had been attacked on Friday by black-clad assailants on motorbikes armed with machetes.

A 20-year-old woman died and her friend was injured. Police said it was too early to tell if the latest attack was linked to the deadly sectarian unrest simmering between the region's majority Muslim and minority Christian communities. Hostilities last broke out in 2001, ignited by rumours that a Muslim girl had been raped by a Christian, attracting the widespread attention of Indonesia's militant Islamists.

To jihadists across the archipelago and beyond, Poso's tensions were a call to arms against the region's 200,000 Christians. By the summer of 2001, with little attempt by the government to halt their migration, thousands of militants, mainly from outlawed groups such as Laksar Jihad and Jemaah Islamiyah, had travelled here with weapons, military training from Afghanistan and a mission to drive out the infidels.

Within months, it was war as the Christians armed themselves, finally prompting the government to send in the military to keep the two sides apart. Thousands died in the following year, and more than 60,000 families fled their homes. For the past four years, despite a high-profile police and military presence and a 'peace deal' between Christians and Muslims, the troubles simmer on.

As news of the beheadings was reported around the world, government officials in the capital, Jakarta, denied Islamic militant involvement, suggesting instead they were the work of Poso's criminal elite to incite religious conflict so they could profit from aid and divert the security forces' attention from tackling crime and corruption.

But independent political analysts such as Sidney Jones, of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, claimed that the killings could only have been carried out by local Islamic extremists linked to regional terrorism networks already blamed for bombings in Bali and Jakarta in recent months.

The beheadings and shootings were not the only attacks on Christians in the Poso region this year. A bomb in Poso's largest Christian market killed 22 people and injured 70 last May. A second bombing last week critically injured a young mother who was among 11 Christian passengers in a van.

Noviana's devastated mother, Nur, 46, blames those attacks and the attempt on her daughter's life on Muslim extremists intent on bringing back large-scale violence to Poso. 'My daughter is fighting for her life because she is a Christian. This has nothing to do with local gangsters; it is about religion. But they won't be able to provoke us, we don't want another war. We want justice, not vengeance. We are suffering enough.'

On the western approaches to Poso, buffaloes luxuriate in muddy fields behind filthy roadside stalls piled with mango and dried flatfish. There is little evidence of rice farmers in traditional coolie hats, only Muslim men in prayer caps. There are no churches, but the domes of small mosques dot the wide horizon of the town. Many look half-built, their distinctive forms merely outlined by exposed metal rods, making them look more like rusting bird cages. Paramilitary police patrols, known as Brimobs, rumble by, the boots of bored soldiers dangling over the edge of their American-made pick-up trucks.

Stretched across the corrugated façade of a roadside shack, a faded black flag displays Laskar Jihad's symbol of blood-red crossed scimitars. Inside, a group of men are smoking Kreteks, Indonesia's ubiquitous clove cigarettes, and watching badly dubbed imports of Western movies. The stall outside suggests they are raising funds for the earthquake in Pakistani Kashmir, but their collection tins are empty.

'Do you recognise it?' asks Usman, the youngest man, smiling at the flag. 'It's been there for years. Nobody seems to want to take it down. We're not terrorists, but we have little respect for Christians. Indonesia should be an Islamic country without the impurities of Christianity or Hinduism. There are no churches here. The beheadings of these schoolgirls suits the Christians. Perhaps they did it to show Muslims as monsters.'

An older man, his yellowing face an mass of wrinkles, hacks and coughs in the recesses of the shack and smiles a toothless grin. 'Assalamu alaikum [may peace be with you],' he says, pointing at my sunglasses which he offers to exchange for an ancient hand grenade.

To many, the distinctive smell of Kreteks is the embodiment of all things Indonesian. Here in this remote corner of Sulawesi it is clear that a love for the weed is one of the few things uniting Christians and Muslims. Indonesia is the world's most populous Islamic country and most of its 190 million Muslims practise a tolerant version of the faith, but hardline groups are on the rise.

In recent months, the country's highest Islamic body issued a fatwa condemning liberal Islamic thought, and radical groups stepped up campaigns to prevent the country's 20 million Christians from building churches, as well as announcing plans to stem the influx of Balinese Hindus to major cities such as Jakarta and Yogyakarta.

In Bekasi, West Java, people claiming to be members of the extremist Islam Defenders Front have prevented three churches from holding services since September, claiming that they did not have the required permits. Two weeks ago, 500 members of the churches held a service in the street but were confronted by a mob of 200 Muslim extremists. Only a heavy police presence prevented a battle between them. Both sides are now taking their dispute to the courts.

Professor Dien Syamsudin, chairman of Muhammadiyah, the second-largest Indonesian Muslim organisation, said: 'Muslims have long been suspicious of Christian proselytisation because of the rapid growth in the number of Christians in the past few years. Christians have the same concerns about Muslims. This perception needs addressing or it could lead to national disintegration.'

Christians see the attacks on the schoolgirls in Poso as part of a calculated campaign by Laskar Jihad, which subscribes to the same militant Wahhabi creed as al-Qaeda's Osama bin Laden and the Taliban and claims to have 10,000 fighters. It has dedicated itself to defending its beliefs across Indonesia.

When the first Laskar commandos arrived in Sulawesi in 2001 they were received by the provincial governor and the head of the local parliament, underscoring their support at the highest levels of government. From direct infusions of cash to fund the fighters to phone calls to local military commanders to prevent crackdowns, sympathisers have ensured that the Laskar Jihad can operate with impunity. Ask anyone in the government about their existence around Poso and you get a flat denial.

About an hour's drive inland from Poso lies Tentena, a Christian stronghold where people blame violent Islamists for the attacks on the girls and the bombings. The town is disfigured by the gutted remains of Muslim houses whose occupants were driven out by Christians at the height of the Poso conflict. Others still bear blood-red spray-painted crosses, the marks of the 'Red Squad' which emerged out of the region to fight its own 'Holy Crusade' against Poso's Muslims when violence first broke out in the region four years ago.

Here, in the sweltering heat, the atmosphere is far from industrious. The yellowing bloodshot eyes of many local people suggest a love of tuak, a powerful palm wine drunk by the litre. Many carry guns in full view of the police.

For peaceful Christians many of them refugees from Poso, the existence of Ninja-clad attackers brings back memories of 2001 when hundreds of masked Muslim men stormed one Christian village after another, firing automatic weapons, tossing petrol bombs and home-made grenades into houses and ordering terrified residents to get out for good. They killed anyone who dared to resist.

'The people of the world called the beheadings of these girls barbaric,' says David, a lay preacher in the town. 'Pope Benedict led prayers in Rome for the safety of Christians here, but few governments have expressed real concern. We are on the verge of another jihad.

'Almost all the religiously motivated aggression this year has been directed against Christians: schoolgirls murdered as the army turns a blind eye. But the government would rather talk of gangsters, not jihadists, carrying out the attacks. I want to know why most of the weapons carried by these militants are army issue.'

To Christians such as David it is 'unthinkable' that the military could have failed to end the attacks. Similar failures can be discerned in other Indonesian hotspots, including Maluku, and the west Kalimantan town of Sambas, where Christians have also been targeted. Claims of army complicity are rife among Christians, who regularly accuse the military of turning a blind eye to the Islamic militia in the area and the smuggling of weapons from the mainland.

Others point to a lack of prosecutions for attacks on Christians and talk darkly of militant training camps in remote valleys, as if to say the next mass slaughter is just around the corner. 'There is a pattern,' says Mona Saroinsong, co-ordinator of the Protestant Church Crisis Centre in Manado, north Sulawesi. 'There have been other attacks apart from the beheadings and shootings and none of the aggressors has been found. The attackers operate in small groups, each with a specific task and area to cover, and wear black masks to avoid being identified. Another similarity with previous attacks is that the head of the police was elsewhere when the killers struck.'

The girls' relatives and friends are demanding justice. A number lobbied the House of Representatives in Jakarta last Thursday, demanding that its members support all efforts to ensure that the murderers are caught.

'We are asking security personnel to finally get serious about investigating the case,' said the group's spokesman, David Malewa, Noviana's brother. 'We are not going to take revenge and have already forgiven the people responsible for the deaths. But can't the state give us a little justice?'

Their demands intensified after five suspects, including a former military police officer, were released for lack of evidence. Three have since been re-arrested, but have yet to be charged.

The Poso police chief, Muhammad Soleh Hidayat, said the investigation was being held up because the only witness was Noviana, who is too ill to be questioned and remains under close guard at a police hospital. 'Our priority is to save her life. It would be inhuman to insist on questioning her,' he said.

Stories of slaughter have become commonplace since the collapse of three brutal decades of dictatorship by President Suharto in 1998. His repression curbed religious and ethnic hatreds. Restraint has now all but vanished in towns such as Poso, with horrifying results.

The beheadings there, other religious attacks and the bombings in Bali make Christians and foreigners living in Indonesia increasingly worried about their safety.

They're barbarians and butchers. All the more reason I don't understand why our hands are tied playing at war with them by nicey-nice rules. We isolate and destroy mad dogs, don't we? I see little difference between the two.

Give it a few more years. These dumbass coward dogs are killing their own people now. When the WORLD as a community reaches a breaking point, then we'll see some REAL action taken against these butchers.

I just hope that when that day comes, there's something I can do to help. Like CUT THE FUCKING HEAD OF ONE OF THEM! Sickening bastards.

Forget waiting. Cut out the politicians who think they're strategic and tactical geniuses and turn I MEF loose on search and destroy missions NOW. Run them to ground and execute with extreme prejudice. :firing:

Useful Searches

About USMessageBoard.com

USMessageBoard.com was founded in 2003 with the intent of allowing all voices to be heard. With a wildly diverse community from all sides of the political spectrum, USMessageBoard.com continues to build on that tradition. We welcome everyone despite political and/or religious beliefs, and we continue to encourage the right to free speech.

Come on in and join the discussion. Thank you for stopping by USMessageBoard.com!